Reply #72: I just watched 'To Kill a Mockingbird' for the first time today. WOW, what a movie, [View All]

[mcg]

I agree. Well said Mr. Scorpio.

I didn't get the meaning of the line 'Stand up, Miss Jean Louise. Your father is passing' until I saw the movie. The delivery of that line was awesome! It's a beautiful movie in several ways. It touched me deeply. I don't think I've read the book, I should.

I must admit I've had tinges of racism in me, not enough where I would be considered a racist, but a little. I feel this election, and now watching this movie, has helped to purge quite a bit of that racism out of me.

One part that moved me is Brock Peters' portrayal of the falsely accused Tom Robinson on the stand. The DVD has interviews of Peters and Gregory Peck talking about it. Peters talked about how he prepared for the scene.

Brock Peters: "My life as an African American or Black American has had a lot of horror, in terms of racism. You know, I've been kicked, beaten, I've seen the worst of it. I guess I've been fortunate in being able to step back from the brink of an anger that would engulf me and cause my life to go in a really downward spiral. The anger, the frustration, the isolation that one could experience and often did experience was an easy place for me to get to, to tap, to use in my performance."
http://notemptynow.com/pages/pages2/ToKillaMockingbird.html

Gregory Peck said he couldn't look Peters in the eyes during that scene, he would have gotten choked up.

“We spent two weeks that I call two weeks of tears--my veil of tears.”

“ I did not, sir. ... There wasn't a dry eye on set filming that scene… Robert Mulligan sat me down and asked me to prepare for the point where I burst into tears by only going to places in my mind where I remembered and experienced pain, and let me tell you the tears did come.”
http://thinkexist.com/quotes/brock_peters/

It's no wonder I was moved, those tears were real.

I can't help notice the similarity of the names Brock and Barack, Robinson and Obama both being falsely accused, Robinson chastised for feeling "sorry for a white woman" and Obama being called an "elitist", and Robinson and Obama being of high moral character.